Show HN: tny.im – the full-featured shortener for URLs and more

by gbl08ma • 12 years ago

1 3 12 years ago

gbl08ma2• 12 years ago

This has been a side-project of mine over the last couple of years. Recently I have given some more attention to it, addressing problems and adding more features.

I know the need for URL shorteners nowadays is reduced, and that's why this tries to be more than a URL shortener. I have tried to make it easy to use but I'm not sure if feature-creep isn't already a problem here...

I'm looking forward to hear opinions about it (and shortening in general), to see what can be improved. I am also wondering if there's a way to monetize this in a clean way (i.e. not with annoying ads and trackers): what would you pay for in a service like this (not necessarily this one)?

lumelet• 12 years ago

nice work. i like the + and ~ features. but why would people use link shorteners, since twitter has a default one. just curious

gbl08ma2• 12 years ago

They can be used for putting URLs in print materials such as newspapers - they are much easier to type by hand than long URLs. The email shortener thing adds light protection against bots harvesting emails. The Bitcoin address shortening feature lets you point to BTC addresses on fields where only URLs are allowed, and displays a useful QR code alongside the address. tny.im can also act as a pastebin, in case you haven't noticed (paste the text in the "Paste or type item to shorten here"). URL shorteners are also useful on IRC.

Personally, I use the link list feature to save a snapshot of open tabs when I'm reasearching something on a public computer and want to open the same set of pages later, at home or on another public terminal where I don't have access to conventional browser bookmarks. Some of my software's main download links are also tny.im links. I can edit the link to point to a new location if I need to change where the software is hosted. This way, the latest version is always reachable at the same address.

Actually, Twitter is probably a very bad reason to use link shortening these days, unless you are looking for click tracking (t.co doesn't do it), of course.

Show HN: tny.im – the full-featured shortener for URLs and more

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